Posted on 03/10/2005 12:50:44 AM PST by freepatriot32
Sorry for the late comment, but I had to go get my car inspected, and I just got home.
The Yuca bread recipe sounds interesting. Question: Does your friends yuca have a bitter taste to it? I ask because Im curious. Im trying to compare your friends yuca with ours.
Also, now that I am thinking about it, and I verified it just now, when making the dough for the yuca frituras (here in Panama), a tiny, tiny bit of regular wheat flour is added to the dough to make it hold together better.
One way yuca is eaten here is after it is boiled, slather butter on it with a little bit of salt and a tiny bit of garlic. One can also chop up a little bit of parsley and sprinkle it over the yuca for color. I much prefer the yuca frituras, though.
According to google, there are two varieties of cassava, the bitter kind, that is poisonous and is used to make tapioca, and the sweet kind, which is not poisonous, and is also known as yuca.
Yucca isn't yuca. Yuca, cassava, manioc, all are names for the same two plants, the bitter/poisonous one which they use to make tapioca, and the sweet/non-poisonous one which tastes a lot like a potato.
The yucca in your yard is a completely different plant.
"Yucca isn't yuca. Yuca, cassava, manioc, all are names for the same two plants, the bitter/poisonous one which they use to make tapioca, and the sweet/non-poisonous one which tastes a lot like a potato.
"The yucca in your yard is a completely different plant."
Please expand on this...thank you. I'm interested.
Oh, I see....I didn't catch the difference in spelling in your post until this second. "Yucca" is a different animal.
Wait a minute...Is "yucca" and "yuca" being used interchangeably here? In Latin countries, the correct selling is yuca...one "c."
I always wondered how people first discovered the safe way to eat lobster.
Fox news got a little bit confused: The plant contains cyanogenic glucoside, which releases cyanide when "disturbed". It takes 150° or 3 days (I believe) to complete the reaction that releases the cyanide.
Nobody eats this. The yuca your mama serves with roast pork is a completely different plant.
SUMMARY
Cassava and bamboo shoots, grown primarily in the tropics, contain potentially toxic compounds called cyanogenic glycosides, linamarin and taxiphillin respectively, which break down upon disruption of the plant cells to form hydrogen cyanide. The toxicity of cyanogenic glycosides can be reduced by appropriate preparation of the plant material prior to consumption as food. Traditional uses of cassava and bamboo shoots as food are dependent on adequate processing prior to human consumption. If either cassava or bamboo shoots are eaten either raw or after inadequate processing, evidence of toxicity may be observed.
For cassava, peeling and slicing disrupts the cell structure of the plant, with subsequent liberation of hydrogen cyanide. Hydrogen cyanide can be removed by further processing such as cooking (baking, boiling, or roasting) or fermentation. For bamboo shoots, slicing into thin strips liberates hydrogen cyanide, which is removed by boiling.
Cyanogenic glycoside content of cassava and bamboo shoots There are a number of varieties of cassava, each of which has a different cyanide level. Values from 15-400 mg/kg fresh weight of hydrogen cyanide in cassava roots have been reported in the literature. Sweet varieties of cassava (low cyanide content) will typically contain approximately 15-50 mg/kg hydrogen cyanide on a fresh weight basis. Sweet varieties of cassava can be processed adequately by peeling and cooking (e.g. roasting, baking or boiling), whereas bitter varieties of cassava (high cyanide content) require more extensive processing, involving techniques such as heap fermentation which take several days. Bitter varieties are not normally commercially traded.
There are approximately 1200 species of bamboo, although only a small number are used as food. Bamboo shoots may contain as much as 1000 mg/kg hydrogen cyanide, significantly higher than the amounts detected in cassava tubers, however, the cyanide content is reported to decrease substantially following harvesting. The bamboo shoots sold commercially as food can be processed adequately by boiling before consumption. The process of canning bamboo shoots liberates and adequately removes hydrogen cyanide.
So, yuca with one c is manioc, or cassava, but yucca with two c's is the one in my yard. That's right! Kinda like a bare bear drinking a beer?
No offense was intended.
Ricin? Strychnine? Any guesses, G?
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